THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
innocent. By this same test the legitimacy of children was determined by the Celts and Teutons, those which floated being owned as legitimate. In India self-immersion is practised while an arrow is shot and retrieved — a mere test of ability to hold the breath. A legendary form attributes to cold water the power to scald the guilty who dares the test. Far more common was the use of hot water, taking its place with the use of the plowshare and ball described above. The usual method was to deposit some object — a stone, ring, piece of metal, or the like — in a caldron of water the ebullition of which kept the object in motion; the suspect was then obliged to plunge his hand and arm into the water and produce the object. In the case of the Ainus the decision rests upon the degree of injury received. In less primitive circumstances the hand is bandaged and sealed and judgment is rendered as in the case of the fire ordeals above. This test is preceded by exorcism or adjuration of the element, the religious conduct of the test being the invariable accompaniment. In India the Brahmins officiate, in Africa the ju-ju man, in Christendom the bishop, abbot, or priest. In India and elsewhere substitutes for hot water are employed, as hot oil or melted butter.
While fire and water, possibly, as the two elements universally employed in ceremonial purification, are most used, other substances and methods are common. (1) Earth is used, as in India, where a clod is taken from a furrow and put in the subject's mouth, after which he swears 4. Other to his innocence; in the Hebrew rit- Ordeals. ual earth or dust is taken from the floor of the tabernacle; in Africa soil is taken from a place supposed to be haunted by spirits; in Australia, in case of a disputed title to land, earth is taken from the plot under discussion. (2) The balance is employed in India; the suspect is first accurately weighed; after an interval he again sits in the scales, after the adjuration: " Thou, O Balance, art the mansion of truth; thou wast anciently contrived by deities: declare the truth, therefore, O giver of success, and clear me from all suspicion. If I am guilty, O venerable as my own mother, then, sink me down; but if innocent, raise me aloft " (cited by H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 295, Philadelphia, 1878). If he rises in the scales, he is pronounced innocent. In Christianity this form of ordeal was employed in witch trials, the Bible being used as the counterbalance in England, Holland, Hungary, and other countries. (3) As noted above, in the water ordeal poison is sometimes mixed with the water. Poison is also employed alone, the particular substance varying with the environment, a miracle being worked, it is supposed, to declare innocence. This is especially common in Africa, particularly in cases of witchcraft, and there the poison bean is the ordinary means, this being responsible for probably thousands of deaths yearly. (4) Quite common is what among Anglo-Saxons was called the corsnsed. The people named took a small piece of bread or cheese consecrated by the usual ceremonies and administered it to the suspect, the guilty being supposed unable to swallow it. In India this took the form of a kind of rice conse-
crated by invocations to deities, while among the Dravidian tribes salt was used in the same way. It was almost inevitable that in Christianity this should pass over into the use of the host, and there was accompanied by a prayer to God or Christ so to constrict the throat of the guilty, that he should be unable to swallow it. That auto-suggestion made this effective is certain beyond a doubt. Hildebrand employed this against Henry IV., who refused the test. (5) The use of religious symbols was common, as when in Africa a fetish is taken in the hand and the oath of expurgation taken. Like reasoning caused in Christianity the use of the cross. Here the ordeal might be singular or dual or plural, suspect, or complainant and defendant, or these and their witnesses standing with arms outstretched before the cross, the first to lower his arms being adjudged to have lost his cause. Among the Irish the ordeal of the cross and salt are combined in the ordeal to which suspected fairy changelings are subjected, the use of these compelling the return of the abstracted infant. (6) The lot was employed, this being regarded as especially effective in giving scope to the deity's power to make innocence manifest. (7) In Christian nations from the thirteenth century use has been made of the bier-right. A suspected murderer is brought into the presence of the corpse of a murdered person and made to touch it, the belief being that on contact with the guilty person the corpse would bleed afresh. In the late Middle Ages this form was employed especially against Jews who were accused of killing Christian girls. (8) The oath, either actual or implicit, is in all the preceding usually essential, the person undergoing the ordeal asseverating his innocence in solemn form. In modern Christian lands it is the one ordeal in common use, and is the survival of the compurgatorial ordeal. It is an appeal to deity in direct form, and among backward peoples it is still a superstition that perjury will result in an immediate or early visitation of God in physical form. While judicial investigations tend in the mass to run in grooves, ingenuity and uniqueness of personality or singularity of circumstance have ever influenced to expedients not " orthodox " or usual. These can not here be catalogued.
The field of the ordeal is the world. In Africa this institution blooms. Among the Barotse the hot-water ordeal is used to detect sorcerers, and the peeling of the skin shows guilt. The vicarious test
is used — to fowls are given the poison
5. Among bean, and the death of the fowl proves
Primitive the offense (L. Decle, Three Years in
Peoples. Savage Africa, p. 76, London, 1898),
or the lizard fetish is whipped, and the thief or wizard confesses to avoid the anger of the fetish. Or the poison bean is swallowed by the individual accused, and death reveals guilt. Or a feather is plucked from the under side of a fowl's wing and thrust through the suspect's tongue; if the feather bends, innocense is proved (M. H. Kingsley, West African Studies, pp. 160-161, 490, London, 1899). In Madagascar a harmless liquor is drunk and proves poisonous in case of guilt (J. S. C. Dumont d'Urville, Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, i. 181; cf. C. Keller, Madagascar, Mauri-